


So dawn goes down to day / Nothing gold can stay.

by orphan_account



Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: First Crush, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Reflection, soda and darry help pony seal acceptance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 11:39:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13189305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There are always outbursts after a death, and Ponyboy, who's been relatively acceptive for one year after Johnny's passing, has a sudden relapse where he starts to see Johnny's faded image in a different light.-"Where'd you learn that?" he'd said. His eyes were big when he stared at me. Maybe some gold had been shining in there. Maybe I was thinking too hard about it, trying to remember the color in Johnny's eyes. But I knew what gold was.I knew what gold was when I'd read that note he'd slipped in the copy of Gone With The Wind that Two-Bit had rushed to bring back from the drugstore, when Johnny was propped up in his bed at the hospital. I knew what gold was when in that note, he'd asked me to tell Dally to watch a sunset sometime.Still, I'd thought when he'd told me to stay gold--- what had he been talking about?Now I knew. Finally. Johnny was gold. Dallas was gold.





	So dawn goes down to day / Nothing gold can stay.

**Author's Note:**

> I know that the book finished with Pony's character development which included him accepting Johnny's death (and Dally's) but I always felt like him shelving Johnny's character in his English paper wasn't really enough. As much as I love how that was written, especially with Pony's denial and outright claim of _him_ being the one to kill Bob, I imagine that there is a hole left in the greasers family because of their losses, and I imagine that Ponyboy eventually has a hard time keeping that down. 
> 
> Sorry this is terribly ooc and mostly unedited

 

 

"You'd better get started on your paper," Darry reminds me at the start of one stuffy night, where Soda's in his room sorting out this week's pay and how he's fixing to split it, and Darry's reheating leftovers. "Due Monday, you said, huh?"

I had looked at him real even. Now that I was a year older Darry didn't fuss on me too much. I thought I was plenty grown. He'd stopped reminding me to do this and that so much lately.

"I'm workin' on it," I nipped at him, and gave a side eye glare down to a filled-up page of lined paper to prove it.

He whapped my arm with his dishtowel in a gentle, playful stroke, and gave me a lopsided grin before I swung my hand out at him right back and missed. I watched him turn around and pull out some baked chicken from the counter.

It was nice to have Darry back, because now he was back. He'd been back for a while. I'd started to see more glimpses of the old Darry--- the Darry before Mom and Dad died, after we reformed as a family again. Soda in the middle, without as many fights as there were. I knew that had helped him pick up a whole lot. Soda looked real nice at almost eighteen. His face was a little sharper from growing, and his smile was a little wider from a more mended household, and that wider smile drove girls pretty crazy, that's what Steve said.

For a moment there, from out of nowhere--- I wondered what Johnny might look like now. I wondered if Johnny's smile would drive girls pretty crazy like Soda's would, or if he'd still be plain old Johnny, and never make a move on any girls he'd liked or anything. If he'd really liked any girls at all.

I scribbled on my paper, barely registering whatever I'd put down last. I thought about it. Maybe Johnny might look a little tougher, being seventeen... no, Johnny had always been tough. He couldn't get any _tougher_ now, even if he was here. (Even if he was alive. He died tough. I always remembered that.) He was tough after he got jumped by those Socs in the beginning and the rings on that Soc Bob's knuckles had cut him, even when he looked like a puppy that been kicked too one too many times, shaking and all. And if he'd been tough but scared then, and if he'd gotten tougher after everything that happened to him, then I couldn't even imagine how tough he might have looked now.

But, I had thought, he didn't look _tough_ with his eyes all big. He _got_ tough after everything that happened to him.

The scars on his face made him look _tuff_ , but his face wasn't tuff or tough at all. It was kind of round and soft-looking. It wasn't hardened like Two-Bit's or Dally's. _Dally's_. I choked, and my pencil rolled across the paper from where it'd slipped from my fingers. The thought was unbidden, like it came out of nowhere and I didn't even ask for it at all.

Darry looked at me from over the chicken. "You sick, Pony?"

"Naw," I said. I picked up my pencil and rolled it around with my finger and thumb. "I's just thinking, and all. You know." I shook Dally and Johnny out of my thoughts without any residue left in the corners. That's usually what I did when I thought about them these days anymore. I stopped being so reverent about it and stopped blaming myself for it and let it go.

"You think too much in that numb head of yours, Pony," Darry nipped at me, and I had snorted and grabbed at the dishtowel he'd spread across the counter--- and I whapped him too.

 

* * *

 

 

Soda's meals weren't so bad anymore. He didn't make green pancakes all that often anymore, but that wasn't to say that he didn't stop being fun about everything. He was brighter once everyone in our house had started to come around. Darry's dinners were still the best, though, probably the best that any of us could handle out to eat. Through mouthfuls of baked chicken, we sat and talked about Soda's day at work, and my day at school, and my next track meet.

"Where you running at?" Sodapop piped up. He was chewing real loud, and Darry flicked him across the table for it.

"Same place," I said, kind of quiet. I peered up at Soda from over my food. "I'm getting Two-Bit to drive me."

"He gonna be in the stands to see you?" Darry rumbled, and Soda laughed loudly. Darry was getting around to lighten up a little more. I think that was really nice for Soda. He was liking to see us getting along.

I laughed too. "Yeah, he will, probably. He usually don't just drop me off and leave. Last time he stayed and watched."

"Johnny used to tag along to a lot of those, huh?" Soda piped up again, a little bit wistful. My fork clattered. I'd just stopped thinking about Johnny when we all sat down to eat. I stared at my chicken. Johnny did tag along to a lot of those. Usually he was pretty quiet, but if I looked up I could see him grinning. When he had gone, Dallas went with him, too.

I gave the plate a blank look and it gave me my blank one right back. I could feel Soda's eyes worrying, and Darry's. When Soda or somebody said something like that about Johnny or Dally--- and usually they just didn't--- usually I said, "Yeah," pretty thoughtful, and tried not to let it hurt so much. But it hurt so bad when I sat there with my brothers' eyes on me. I don't know why it did, because I sat there in that same seat for a lot of dinners and talked about Johnny a lot of times before. I didn't know if it was because earlier, my mind was wandering to how Johnny might have looked like if he were still alive, and I pictured his face a year older, a little bit sharper and a little bit longer. Maybe that was it, picturing him still here a year later. That image was awful disconcerting. I think it scared me.

"Yeah," I croaked, trying to say it like how I usually did when somebody brought up Johnny. "Yeah, he did." I didn't look at Soda or Darry. I thought, if I did, would they see how hard I was trying not to cry? And if they did, would I be as ashamed of myself with their eyes on me, and me looking right back? Suddenly I realized that before I never felt too bad about being ashamed of Johnny's death. I always cried when it hit hard, and I always blamed myself. I even convinced myself he wasn't gone, that our Johnny wasn't gone...

Soda didn't say anything for the rest of dinner after that. I thought that was unlike him. I thought it was all pretty unlike me, too.

 

* * *

 

I was finishing up on my homework when Soda slinked up from behind me and asked if I wanted a smoke. "Hey, Ponyboy," he said softly.

I looked at him. I had washed the dishes that night and nobody said anything about it. Darry went to his room, and I realized that I didn't really care what he did, or what anyone did tonight. I was still thinking about Johnny, and I was scared that I would start to cry at the dinner table in front of Darry for it, but now I couldn't bring myself to cry even if I wanted to. It was probably the longest I've thought about Johnny at a time since a few weeks after he died. I don't know why I never thought about it long. I know that I thought about Dally real long and hard after he died. Maybe it was because now I had Soda and Darry to fill up a little more space in my life, or maybe it was just because I didn't want to think about Johnny too long.

I told him that I didn't want a smoke. I was getting pretty alright at track again, and with my next meet, I didn't want to throw a wrench into things by starting up again. I don't know if just one weed could do that for you, but I guess in that moment I thought that it would. I started to stop smoking so much, and went from a pack or to hardly much at all. I thought that was strange, like if smoking might help me some, give me something to do all the time, but it didn't. Maybe if I only had those chocolate cigarettes, but those weren't around so I had track and I let up smoking for it.

Soda touched the ends of my hair and rubbed it through his fingers. "Your hair is coming back." I put away my homework and sat to face him. My hair was growing back, almost back to how long it'd been before. The bleach wasn't fading any, though--- Two-Bit told me if it was peroxide then there wasn't anything I could do but dye it back, but I found myself always wanting to keep it that way, bleached real light like that. Sometimes when I looked at my reflection in the mirror, lake, or a Pepsi bottle, I would briefly see Johnny standing there with me with his awful haircut too. Sometimes I was reminded of that when I combed my hair, looking at myself and my scrappy little cut, and I thought about how Johnny had handed me his switch to do his own hair--- to 'cut the front and thin out the rest', and how he'd comb it back after he washed it.

"Johnny," I'd said, plainly and tiredly, "You can't wash your hair in freezing water in this weather. You'll get a cold." He told me to do it anyway. Afterwards we talked about how we were disguised now, and there wasn't much going back--- and I cried. When Johnny saw my tears, he said he was sorry for cutting my hair, but I said, "Oh, it ain't that." I told him, "I really don't know what's the matter. I'm just mixed up."

"I know," he said with chattering teeth and a trembling lower lip, and we had gone back inside. "Things have been happening so fast," he remarked, and I put my arm around his shoulders to warm him up.

Now, I reached out to Sodapop and I put my arm around his shoulders. Now tears began to well up in my eyes again, and I was about to cry for real this time. I hadn't been looking at mine and Johnny's reflections in a mirror or in the lake or off the side of a Pepsi bottle--- the whole time, I'd just been looking at my brother, with his sad brown eyes. I saw Johnny's soft black ones in them. My ears burned with shame, and squirming heat churned at the linings of my gut. Soda's other hand was still at my hair.

"I ain't gonna dye it back," I told him as his fingers wove through it more, and I guess in that moment a tear slipped from my eye. "Oh, blast it, Soda, I miss Johnny," I warbled as I cried, and he looked at me sort of sad. He held me like how I held Johnny when he'd lamented in the church about how maybe I'd like it if I were the one to kill Bob--- and I cried harder when I thought about it like that. It was a long time since I'd cried, really cried about Johnny or Dallas. But in that moment I don't think I'd ever been so upset when I thought about Johnny all shaken up like that, and he still had to die.

Soda didn't ask me anything about it. Then I figured maybe he'd cried once or twice about Johnny or Dallas like that. Maybe he hadn't. I hadn't imagined if he couldn't or not, but even if he didn't, he let me sob in his arms without saying a word. I don't remember if I said anything after that. I think that night I had must have gone silent after crying myself out so much; my next sight was the glassy morning shining at me from beyond the window, but Sodapop still held me, the two of us having moved to our bedroom, curled tight in our bed.

 

* * *

 

 

We learned to fill up time in the cracks where Johnny and Dallas weren't around. We couldn't fill up all of it, but we tried. There wasn't any way to just seal off those craters blown that Dallas and Johnny left. I guess it got easier as time went on, but I guess that we also didn't really think about it as we did it. Or maybe I didn't. Maybe I still needed to learn to use my head a little more, like Darry would ask me to do, but he'd stopped griping to me about that, so I guess I thought I'd been doing an okay job about that.

Most of our weekends had been spent hanging with each other, at the movies or around the town.

Now we were two members short out of us all. I started using my money to buy more books, and I started walking to the movies and back alone now. Maybe that wasn't too different than what I'd been doing before, either. I still drew a lot of pictures. This Saturday morning, they were of Johnny.

Next to a little loop containing the drunken curve of Johnny's face all poorly done in my pencil rendition was Soda's Mickey Mouse. I guess I was thinking about that horse a lot, with Sodapop being so happy lately. Mickey Mouse was one of the only things that used to make him so happy. When Mickey was gone, it must have left one of those same craters I had. I studied my page, and Darry leaned over my shoulder. I felt him before I saw him or heard him. It sounded like he was gonna say something, but stopped, because he went real quiet for a minute.

Finally he said it to me. "That of Johnny?" he asked, kind of gruff, but real soft, like maybe he'd understand. I don't really know if Darry or Soda would understand. Maybe Soda was better with that kind of thing. He hadn't said anything last night. He just let me cry.

"Yeah," I said.

"Looks good," he mumbled. "He would have laughed at it, probably. He thought some stuff you did was real goofy."

"Yeah," I said again, and scratched my pencil along the bottom of the page.

"You been thinking about him lately?"

"Yeah."

"He did a lot of goofy stuff too. You know that. He was always kind of reckless." Darry's mouth was flying without really knowing what he was saying. My jaw set. I knew that it was a long time that we had talked about Johnny or Dally, and the subject was kind of dusty, like it'd been shelved and was just better off untouched. "Why do you have to say that?"

Darry paused again. "He never got himself into a lot of trouble until it was for you," he said. Suddenly I didn't feel so good just sitting there listening to him, Mickey Mouse and Johnny's badly drawn face looking at me. "He never really liked to fight. He didn't like rumbles, did he?" Darry laughed. He had a low laugh. "But he would chase anyone for Dally and you. I don't know. I don't know if he was cut out to be a fighter." I wanted Darry to stop talking. I knew that I should have appreciated what he said, but it didn't feel right. Johnny wasn't cut out to fight, but he wasn't cut out to have to kill a Soc because of me.

"Oh, come on," I said, and I didn't know if it was mostly to Darry or mostly to myself. I stood up so I wouldn't have to look at the drawing. Darry didn't seem to be too concerned. "Johnny fought hard. He and Dally fought, and they were heroes." I was feeling all kinds of vexed when I said that, and it scratched at the bottom of my voice.

"Johnny was a real wimp," Darry said, his voice tired and a little bit rueful. I knew that he was just thinking fondly, but suddenly I felt anger shoot out of me like the bullet in a heater, flying so fast it could ignite for even a second. My mind went quick to Johnny's beat-up face, when he got jumped by a bunch of Socs, long before the greasers and the Socs had resigned to some sort of mutual understanding, and long before he'd died, and long before he'd killed Robert Sheldon. I thought about Johnny's beat-up and bruised face. The anger hit me harder.

"Shut up!" I yelled at him. "Oh, just shut up!"

I didn't notice that my hands were shaking, and I didn't know why. I didn't know why this hurt so bad.

We talked about Johnny and Dally from time to time. It helped with the pain a little bit, but it also hurt too in the beginning. But Dally talking about him in a way that was supposed to make me let out a hiccupy laugh like I usually would instead made me mad.

"Don't you ever, ever, ever say something like that about Johnny!" I cried, and punctuated each 'ever' with a throw of my hands. They knocked out, flailing from my sides, and Darry flinched at it. I felt sorry when I saw his face then--- I knew he didn't understand what I was feeling, and I was being unfair to him. It was unspoken that we'd all reached acceptance, and I'd reached acceptance, over Johnny killing Bob and over Johnny dying. When I was with Johnny when he was around--- I got to get to acceptance real quick. I accepted that he wasn't a real easy talker, and I had made the most of that by sitting with him in the quiet. I had accepted that he had shocked off all my hair when we were at Windrixville, on the run and alone, and I made the most of that by letting Two-Bit call me this and that for it when we got back home as he walked around me and called me a baldy.

"He didn't deserve..." I felt tears welling up again, and I stopped being able to count how much that'd been happening since just the other day. Ever since Johnny killed Bob I'd started to get up as a real easy crier, and that was a long time ago. But after I accepted that Johnny was dead, the crying mostly dithered out.

I realized that I'd been trying so hard to leave Johnny behind. No, I'd been trying to move on from Johnny. Even if I knew that was what Johnny would have wanted, to not sink on it too much, he told me to stay gold. I always remembered that.

And I knew what was gold when he told me, before his head sunk into the pillow and his big eyes wound down shut. I remembered telling Johnny about staying gold the first time - about how I'd been trying to make sense of the Robert Frost poem, and how I figured out what it meant, so I recited it for him word for word.

"Where'd you learn that?" he'd said. His eyes were big when he stared at me. Maybe some gold had been shining in there. Maybe I was thinking too hard about it, trying to remember the color in Johnny's eyes. But I knew what gold was.

I knew what gold was when I'd read that note Johnny had slipped in the copy of Gone With The Wind that Two-Bit had rushed to bring back from the drugstore, when Johnny was propped up in his bed at the hospital. I knew what gold was when in that note, he'd asked me to tell Dally to watch a sunset sometime.

Still, I'd thought when he'd told me to _stay gold_ \--- what had he been talking about?

Now I knew. Finally. Johnny was gold. Dallas was gold.

Darry looked sad when I reached to look back up at him, and that really got me startled. Darry looking sad because of me wasn't a thing that I was used to. I know that maybe we had all been sad. I knew, then, that Darry could be inconsolable. I knew that when Mom and Dad died...

But he loved me, and he must have loved Johnny. Even if it was a long time ago that we had reached an unspoken acceptance. "I'm sorry," I said, and my eyes felt sunken and heavy from the crying, but tears slid out from my eyelids anyway. I was kind of bewildered at how nice Darry was being to me, but mostly, I was glad that it was him. I was glad that Sodapop knew how hard it was with Johnny and Dallas gone. And I was glad that Darry felt something about it too. I sniffed as I bounded to Darry's arms, and I was surprised even though I knew that it was me going in for it--- when he closed me up in a tight hug.

I put my chin just below his curled-up shoulder. I wasn't nearly as tall as he was now, but Soda and Steve told me that I was growing along pretty well. "Darry?" My voice was hardly over a breath. I figured it was kind of weird to tell Darry. I figured maybe Sodapop would know better about the whole thing. But the truth is I didn't really know how to tell either of them this, or maybe anyone. And if it were someone else than Johnny, which it might have never been, then maybe never even Johnny.

"What is it, Pony?" He sounded almost meek. I dug my fingers into his arm. I wondered if he would think I was silly for this, or maybe delusional.

"I think I loved Johnny," I said as soft as I could. "I don't know. I think that he was gold."

Darry made a noise, but it wasn't an angry one. He sounded amused. "I think we all loved Johnny, kid." I was bewildered. He never called me kid.

"No. I think that I really loved Johnny. Or maybe I just love him a lot now."

Darry shrugged, and my head raised, being dragged up along from the movement of his shoulders. "That's okay. I know Johnny loved you."

"Naw," I said. I was feeling less worried about it now, but now I was just feeble. "I don't know if he did."

"What'd you say he was?" Darry asked, looking back down at me. "He was gold?"

I wriggled out of the hug and went back to my seat by the counter to look at my sloppy drawing of Johnny's face as I had remembered it. I drew his eyes big, and scratched in the spaces of his darker skin. "I'm too dark-skinned to look okay blond," Johnny had said to me.

"Yeah," I choked out. "He was gold. He told me to stay gold."

"It's gonna get easier," Darry said. I thought about how I looked in Sodapop's eyes and saw Johnny's. I thought about seeing Johnny's messed-up face from when he'd gotten done a number on by the Socs the first time. Now, in my mind, I saw him shake with the skittish little tremble he used to have and I heard his still-quiet voice resound in my ears: _Stay gold, Ponyboy---_ accompanied by a short little smile and a hawkish laugh.

"Okay."

"Johnny would have loved to see you now."

I was quiet thinking about that. Maybe Darry was right. I hoped that he would. I would have loved to see him now, too. I'd been ignoring the way that he and Dallas just weren't there all that time, and it always left me and Soda and Darry and Two-Bit sad, when somebody talked about Johnny or Dallas but they weren't here. It was Johnny or Dallas would have loved this, or Johnny or Dallas would have got a real crack out of that. But now I felt alright. I guess that if I could have loved to see him, and he could have loved to see me, then that was alright.

"I hope that I'll see him sometime," I said to Darry, as quietly as I could, even though I knew nobody else would hear. He nodded. "He was gold, Ponyboy."

"He was," I said, and this time, I didn't do any more crying. I settled back into my seat and filled in Mickey Mouse's mane of hair.

When I did, I looked at Johnny's. My hand drifted from the portrait of Soda's old horse to the closing off of Johnny's shoulders in his jeans jacket. Under the space where the pencil strokes had trailed into light lines of gray, I straightened out my wrist and I wrote: _Stay gold, Ponyboy._


End file.
